Solved: Help needed: External hard drive

Question:Solved: Help needed: External hard drive

I am currently running Windows Vista Ultimate on my Acer Aspire 9815WKHA Laptop, I have a 500gb seagate external drive plugged in via USB 2.0 (the drive is a desktop version). It has been working fine for about 3 months until now. I recently updated my drivers with PC Updater which slowed the machine down and had problems shutting down, I rolled all the Drivers back through PC Updater, system was still playing up so i transfered all personal important files to the Seagate External Drive (inc. C:\Program Files ... as i have programs what i needed to keep). I attempted to restore Factory Settings through Acer ERecovery system and it black screened on me, i left it for 40+ mins and had to hard reboot, after a few issues I used my back-up disks to reboot the system, Laptop working fine but my External Drive (Seagate) will not show up in "Computer". It is showing up in Computer Management "Disk Management" but when I right click it only shows up with "Help", in the bottom pane i right click and it shows "Convert to Dynamic Disk..." "Properties" "Help". I can't seem to assign a Drive Letter and can't seem access the External Drive to retrieve my data (very important data). Can somebody help me with this issue, either to get it working again or just to retrieve my data.

- I have tested the USB 2.0 with another External Hard drive and a Pen drive.- I have tested the Seagate External Hard Drive on another Laptop (same problem).- I have disabled the External Hard Drive and Enabled it again.- I have uninstalled the drivers and re-installed them.

Nothing seems to be working. Please Help

Relevance
100%

Preferred Solution:
Solved: Help needed: External hard drive

I recommend downloading and running Reimage. It's a computer repair tool that has been proven to identify and fix many Windows problems with a high level of success.

Im Having what seems like an interesting problem. My laptop (with windows 7) recognizes that my external hard drive is plugged in but I cant access it. (Hopefully this is the right forum for this)

I plug it in, the computer recognizes that its plugged in.I open Device and Printers menu and it shows that it sees the External Hard Drive.I open My Computer, the external is not there.I go to Disk Management, and it is found but when I tried to assign a letter it gave an error.

When I plug in Thumb Drives though, I have full use of it. Moving files on and off it, open files on them, etc.

All the Thumb Drives I try work properly.All External Hard Drives (i have 5) are recognized but not accessable.All External Hard Drives and thumb drives work on other computers just fine.

My question is, how do I go about getting use of my external hard drives using this computer?

hey! i currently have a pc desktop and want to swap it for a macbook, i was thinking of getting an external hard drive to put all my files on! i was looking at a seagate freeagent go 160 GB or seagate freeagent desktop!! being a complete novice when it comes to all things technical am i likely to run into any issues doing this? or can you suggest an alternative hard drive? cheers

Answer:External Hard drive help needed!!

I don't think the Drive is a Problem. Your problem is that a Macbook will not I don't think be able to read see your files

I am using a Mac Mini (Power PC), OS X, Version 10.5.6 with a Seagate 500 GB Free Agent External Hard Drive.Here is my problem...I always use my external hard drive for my iTunes library, pictures, home movies, etc. It is always connected and always on. However, STUPID, stupid me disconnected it today and connected it to my daughter's PC (running Windows XP). I was trying to remove a large 17 GB AVI file that my husband put on her computer. I hooked up my drive and of course, Windows XP didn't see it. So, I went in (with the help of the 'if you don't already know this - you shouldn't be doing this' Windows Wizard) and gave it a drive name, etc. Basically, I think I "partitioned" it and reformatted it for a PC.Now, my Mac will not recognize it. It does say "S.M.A.R.T. Status: Not Supported." Okay, I think I get what dummy me did - I reformatted my external hard drive to a PC. My question is, how do I reformat it back to my Mac - WITHOUT ERASING what is on it? My stuff is still on there, as it says there is only about 232 GB available, which means it's still there.Would someone HELP me?? I'm not the best with computers (and apparently not the sharpest crayon in the box today) and I am really scared that I have just lost my entire iTunes library, all of my home movies, pictures, etc.!Thank you for reading this and for any help/advise you can offer!

I have a WD My Book 2 TB external Hard Drive. Lately when I restart my computer with it plugged in it will either not be recognized or it will show up but I can not access anything on it. On the occasions that it is recognized I open it up and it was that it is entirely empty.

The only way I can make sure it works is by having it unplugged when I start up my computer and plug it in when it is up and running.

Things I have tried:scanning for virusesreinstalling the driver.If anyone out there can help me with this, or explain what is going on I would be very thankful. I am not the best with computers so please have patience with me.

Answer:Help with external hard drive needed

if you right click on the drive in my computer does it show any data as being used? or does it show it being blank?

I have a WD Elements external hard drive model# WD4000CO35-000. About two weeks ago it stopped working like it normally does for me. Normally when I plug it in a box comes up and asks if I want to view the folders. Or I can just go into "My Computer" and click on the Elements (G) driveBut now, when I plug it in, no box comes up to ask if I want to view the folders. The icon in the lower right has the "safely remove hardware" icon. In "My Computer", it shows up as "Local Disk (G)" instead of with the Elements logo like it used to do. When I click on this icon, the window goes to "not responding". Even just a single right click. When I double click it, it takes about 2 minutes to try to load and then teh following message shows up: "G:/ is not accessible. The request could not be performed becasue of an I/O device error."

Once or twice last week when I plugged it in, the "Local Disk (G)" didn't even show up in "My Computer", Just the safely remove hardware icon in the lower right.The hard drive does not make any clicking sounds, and it sounds like it's running normal. The blue light is on also, and blinking like normal.

I would GREATLY appreciate it if someone can help me resolve this issue. I need the files from this hard drive, and really don't want to pay hundreds of dollars to bring it to a data recovery company.Thanks!

SO this past Christmas I was at home and bumped my external hard drive (ROCK brand) off my desk and it stopped working. I opened it up and found no solution so I began my quest for a new hard drive. I found one on eBay (ACOMDATA brand) that the seller sold for dirt cheap because it would not turn on due to a faulty enclosure (from the description it seemed as if the drive would be salvageable). I thought maybe I would be able to open up the new hard drive and remove it and connect it to my old hard drive enclosure.Once I got the Acomdata hard drive I tried plugging it into my old enclosure and it sound like everything starts up but once I plug it in, the computer recognizes it in the "remove usb safely" icon in the lower right but it wont recognize the drive in My Computer.Two questions for you guys:1. Is there some way I can locate the drive and use it as intended as a storage device?2. If I cant do that mean there is something wrong with the hard drive? Can I not use one brands hard drive on another brands enclosure? Should I look at buying a new enclosure from Acomdata? Any feed back would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Answer:External Hard Drive Help Needed!!!!!

Right clik My Computer...select Manage...then Disk Management...Does it show up there ? ?If so right clik it and select Properties and report back with your findings...

When I have to re-format, install and re-config this beast, I have the following fun!

Fdisk from 3.5 floppy with windows 95 boot on it, then delete the partition, exit, save etc then, insert Windows xp cd, it works fine every time, installs in about 40 minutes, then comes dell drivers for sound, monitor, and intel chipsets, following me so far?Not finished yet...Service packs 1,2,3 then all my office software, 2007, Ulead PI x5 and a ton of other dvd burning, converters, and other things i like, then usb modem, download chrome, and it goes on like that for half the nite.WHAT I NEED, is a way, to make my External 40 Gig USB Hard Drive just boot, so I can run set up, and pull all the above software on this puppy, pack up all my cd's have a weeny roast with em and basically re-install windows and everything from the external HD.If I have to, I can at least start the CD windows install, re-boot then hope without service packs for usb 2.0 support it will let me access the 40 gig and start the phun? Any ideas welcome.

Or ?

Answer:External usb 40 gig Hard Drive help needed!

Fdisk? There should be no need for that at all.In any case, what you need is a disk image.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_imagehttp://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htmhttp://www.acronis.com/

i bout an external case and i put my own hard drive in it and it worked when i plugged it in. but as soon as i shut it off and then turn it back on the computer doesn't recognize it. then i turned it off and unplugged the usb and power cable and then plugged them back in and it worked..then i shut it off later on and turned it on and it did the same thing.. i redid the steps and it worked.. then i shut it off and turned it on and then i tried the same steps but it still isn't working now... i had to always go to disk managment and activate it but when i go there, it's not showing up.. what do i do with this thing? this is wut it looks like http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-3-5-USB-2-0...br /> ZViewItem

> I took this drive to the Geek Squad and they checked it, actually, disassembled it

Inside most "external" disk-drives is a standard "internal" disk-drive.

An "internal" disk-drive has two major components -- the electronics & I/O adapter, and the "spinning" part.The electronic components can easily be separated and replaced.But, the difficulty is in finding an identical (or nearly so) component from the same manufacturer, to replace any "fried" electronics.

The "spinning" part was sealed in a "clean-room", to preserve the recording surfaces and the electric motor that spins the recording surfaces.

So, if they disassembled it, and connected the disk-drive as an "internal" disk-drive,and their computer could not detect the disk-drive, then the electronics have been damaged.

If the electronics is OK, maybe it's the motor that spins the disk-drive that has failed.

> told me that the only way to recover the information within the disk is to send it to a special room (pure air room)> and extract the disk and assemble it on another drive case.

They probably are correct -- in a "clean-room" the recording-surfaces can be extracted from within the "sealed" container, and mounted into another container, just surviving long enough to copy all your data files onto a brand-new disk-drive.

A commercial "data-recovery-surface" can do the two "levels":* replacing the electronics plate -- probably not too ex... Read more

Can anyone recommend a Portable external hard drive which will also synchronise as well (I have a Vista Laptop and an older XP laptop which I use as a spare.)

Answer:Recommend needed for Portable external hard drive

Keith, Welcome to the CH forums. There are probably many portable Hd's that will satisfy your needs and i think it would be more productive if you shopped for the best price once you have determined what you want. If you don't need to be at the leading edge of the technology (IE one of the 1 tetra byte units that are now being offered) then drives up to 250GB are readily obtainable below $100.00 U.S. Fry's electronics (both the stores and the online) http://shop1.Fry's.com/template/harddrives/ will give you some idea of the costs. Others on the forum seem to favour "newegg" but i personally have no experience with them. Another alternative is to convert an internal hd to an external with a case enclosure. I have done this with a number of hd's of varying capacity and they work well. If you happen to have an internal that you are not using this could be a cheaper option. The cases connect via USB ports and are totally portable. goodluck ,truenorth

I went back to the factory installed image. This is after replacing the Motherboard. 6 months ago I sent the computer in and they replaced the motherboard and power supply. I feel like the power supply may be the issue after getting the event id 41 kernel power, also I am questioning whether I originally had a 800W vs the current 500W. Though it may be because I had to force power on/off. I have been reloading my computer with stuff I saved on my external hard drive and playing itunes one song off of my external hard drive, (WD15000H1NC my book). Attached is the system health report and a .arn file. AVG antivirus will be installed today, please help me so I haven't thrown $800 down the drain.

Is Windows 7 . . .- x64- Windows 7 pro 64bit- OEM, with disk.

- What is the age of system (hardware)? 1 year- What is the age of OS installation (have you re-installed the OS?) put OEM image on 2-4-2012

Answer:BSOD - External Hard Drive problem? help needed

Quote: Originally Posted by joshnixee

I went back to the factory installed image. This is after replacing the Motherboard. 6 months ago I sent the computer in and they replaced the motherboard and power supply. I feel like the power supply may be the issue after getting the event id 41 kernel power, also I am questioning whether I originally had a 800W vs the current 500W. Though it may be because I had to force power on/off. I have been reloading my computer with stuff I saved on my external hard drive and playing itunes one song off of my external hard drive, (WD15000H1NC my book). Attached is the system health report and a .arn file. AVG antivirus will be installed today, please help me so I haven't thrown $800 down the drain.

Is Windows 7 . . .- x64- Windows 7 pro 64bit- OEM, with disk.

- What is the age of system (hardware)? 1 year- What is the age of OS installation (have you re-installed the OS?) put OEM image on 2-4-2012

No dmp files included in upload try this methodIf you are overclocking STOP

You may be able to get the DMP files without crashing by booting into safe mode (F8) with networking.

To enable us to assist you with your computer's BSOD symptoms, upload the contents of your "\Windows\Minidump" folder.

The procedure:

Quote:
* Copy the contents of \Windows\Minidump to another (temporary) location somewhere on your machine.* Zip up the copy.* Attach the ZIP archive to... Read more

My laptop fried yesterday so I've bought a new one today which has Vista Home Premium pre-loaded on it. I have saved all of my university work onto a Pluscom 2.5 USB 2.0 external hard drive caddy which up until now has worked fine on XP. It worked on another xp pc earlier on, temporarily worked on a friends laptop running vista home basic, but it will not work on my new laptop. I've just tried it onto a totally clean pc that's running xp home and although it finds it as a mass storage device, it does not appear in My Computer and when I try to safely remove hardware it hangs the whole thing. I'm at my wits end, I desperately need the information on this drive so cannot risk anything that may format it and destroy my work. The other weird thing is when I go into safely remove hardware, underneath the mass storage device it says disk drive then a y with 2 dots above it. I don't know if that's relevant to anything? Can somebody please, please help me, I have deadlines to make and no way of accessing anything.

Answer:External hard drive and Vista - help desperately needed

A virus can do that, or an error with your external drive's hardware. Or your partitions somehow got corrupted. There are a number of recoverey programs available that can be used if the hardware is still ok. First determine if the harddrive is being detected properly:Go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management. See if your harddrive's correct size is being detected. (you'll have to try all this on the laptop which detects the drive). Right click on the drive, go to properties, and see if the manufacturer's name show up in the window. If not, you'll have to seek out an expert to disassemble your harddrive, take out the actual disk and use it in another case and see if that works. I've not know the disks to go bad; usually the hardware error if any happens to the USB controller within the case but external to the actual harddrive.If the drive is being recognized correctly, then the problem is with the partitions. A friend of mine ran into a similar problem when his partitions weren't being read. He used [email protected] partition recovery, that worked for him. Try that, if it doesn't work don't lose hope, there are other programs to and one of them could work for you.

I've just bought a new laptop, and need to transfer files from my old computer's hard drive (now in an external casing). My new laptop, which runs with Vista, appears to have 2 drives. A C: drive (called Vista) and an E: drive (called Data). I connected my external hard drive, opened Computer, then dragged the folders from the external drive into the 'Music'/'Pictures'/'Documents' tabs at the side of the page. However, it now tells me that my Vista drive (C is now almost full and I get messages telling me I'm running out of memory. My Data drive (E is empty. Should I have copied the files into the data drive? Is the Vista drive for program and system files only?

All help appreciated.

Answer:Help needed copying music files from external hard drive

right mouse click on the drive letters - how much space is used / available ?a guess is "E" is a recovery partition (unless it's your cd/dvd drive).....

This is probably a real basic question. I want to make an image of my hard drive using Macrium Free. The MBR is 100 MB and the primary drive is 471 GB. Do I need at least 471.1 GB of free space on the external drive for the image or does the imaging software compress the size so that a lesser amount of space is needed?

Answer:How much space is needed to make an image on an external hard drive

It will apx. 60% of the SPACE USED, not the total size of the partition.

I want to get an external hard drive/dvd burner combo if there is such a thing. To make this question as simple as possible...I need a hard drive that my camera can be plugged into with the firewire. I also need the hard drive that is able to plug in to the USB2 slot on my computer, becausemy new Dell doesn't seem to tolerate a firewire card which I installed and then took out and returned to the store. It froze my computer and I tried everything to stabilize it but had no luck. It did work long enough to download 10 min. or so of video and I burned that onto a cd. Thats when I found out I had a dvd-rom not a dvd burner......long story I know. Sorry. I just want to figure out the most economical way now to save my movies and burn them to dvd also using either another external dvd burner or maybe there is a hard drive/dvd burner combo?? Or should I just get two separate externals? Again: I need the hard drive/burner to plug into my computer with usb2.Then the firewire from the camera would go into the hard drive/burner to download the movies.

I have a netbook which I want to recycle however it has been used for business purposes and I want to properly format the drive. The issue I have is that it does not have a CD drive nor does it have a working screen. I have connected the hard drive to external display and manually deleted all files from the computer but I know this is not really 'deleting' anything.

How can I format the drive from within Windows? Unfortunately I cannot get bios to display on the external display so I can not do anything from DOS or Bios simply because I can't see anything!

My latest attempt has been to use Active KillDisk to create a bootable USB however this is when I ran into the issue of the Bios and DOS not displaying, it will only display once windows has been loaded.

It is usually because the installation cannot recognise the SATA driver for the hard discIf you have a usb drive load from Toshiba the sata controller driversso on the screen for the install you press F6 load drivers and then load the sata driver from the usb - I say usb as I presume you do not have a floppy driveOR you can include them in a reburnt CD using nLite but that is a longer way round the problemNlite

http://www.nliteos.com/guide/part2.html

OR you can TRY try this

Enter your BIOS/Setup UtilityLocate the Serial ATA or SATA configuration sectionI&#8217;ve seen this section called &#8216;On Chip Config&#8217; on some Phoenix Award BIOS

On Lenovo/IBM ThinkPads it&#8217;s in Config > Serial ATA (Sata)Change the mode of the SATA controller from AHCI to IDE or CompatibilitySave & ExitReboot and begin the Windows Setup again.If Windows Setup successfully detects your hard disk this time then go ahead and perform the Windows Setup.When Windows setup completes change the mode back to AHCI in the BIOS

Hi all,I recently bought a WD My Book Essential Edition external hard drive and wanted to change it from FAT32 to NTFS. I was following instructions given on WDs website, however the directions weren't entirely clear (of course only noticed after the fact). I right clicked on My Computer, clicked manage and used Disk Manager. The instructions said to find the drive, right click on it and click delete partition. It didn't mention however, to do that with bottom part of the screen and not the top. So, I think I just deleted the logical drive.

It shows up on the device manager and the "Safely Remove Hardware" window, but the drive letter no longer shows up under My Computer.

I have a hard drive on my computer marked, D: recovery ... I'm getting an error message that says it's full. It gives me a couple of options for clean up ... 1) this one looks like the standard "Disc Cleanup" on the system tools menu, but it only offers two choices and both of those show no bytes. 2) this looks like the "Add/Remove Programs" feature on the Control Panel.

My problem is what do I remove? Is this all simply back up and can I remove it all? Or do I have to pick between programs? All the programs listed in the menu l;ook to be programs I use in my everyday work...

I've never had a computer or even seen one that had this D: Recovery drive...

Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to kick my way..................Chief

I finally went out and bought a maxtor 40 gig hard drive, and I have a few questions.

First, I set the new drive as slave, and the old drive as master, and elected to copy the contents of the old drive to the new. I am not sure it worked. When I tried booting the system with the new drive only installed, it said a file wasn't found (sys. something) and I needed to insert a startup disk.

I tried booting with the old drive master and new drive slave, and it worked, but I now have 5 gigs free in my old drive (I had 500 megs free before, where did I get the extra space?) and I have about 19 partitions of 2 gigs each.

How can I get rid of all the partitions? Are they really necessary? It's a pain in the butt to have not only drive C, but F, G, H, I, J, K, L, etc. all the way up to V.

I will start over if needed, I just want the best approach possible. A friend of mine said he might be able to let me use his Norton Ghost 2002 program, if that is better then the Maxtor included software.

So basically, any help is appreciated. I am running Windows XP Pro in case anyone needed to know. I just need a step by step tutorial

I have an old BYTECC hard drive enclosure. Trying to use it on an older XP system for back up. Got a bunch of 40G hard drives I can use.

The OS will detect the external drive is connected and powered up, arrow shows in the tray for a USB drive, checked the device manager and it sezs the drive is there and operating properly, recognizes it, but does not assign a drive letter.

AIDA32 sezs it is there but same deal shows no drive letter.

I've tried four different hard drives with the same results. I know the hardware works on other computers, this particular computer USB works with other canned external drives, it reads a flash memory stick as a drive no problem. I know the BYTECC is set up properly, should be the same as with other computers. Works ok on a Win2000 system.

What could be the problem? Is there something to tweak? I do know this XP system would not read hard drives that had been formatted on non-XP computers before. Don't exactly know what systems all these drives were formatted on. Isn't making any sense to me at the moment. Doing it just like I did on the Win2000 system with other drives, everything worked as it should.

Thinking I could try to slap one of the drives in as a slave and try to format it that way, hopefully can get it to be read as a USB drive instead.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer:Solved: External hard drive not assigned a drive letter

If the drive shows up in Disk Management (Start/Run/diskmgmt.msc/OK), right-click the drive icon or the area showing the drive below, select "Change drive letter and paths". In the next window click "Add". Next window click the radio button for "Assign the following drive letter". Select a drive letter. Click OK.

hi guys. the external hard drive, here at work, cannot be detected by any of the computers. my thoughts are that the data was wiped clean. i've removed the hard drive from the case and installed it onto my computer as a slave drive. a) how can i view if these files still exist. and b) if they are missing, can you recommend a software recovery program?

I plug it in as usual, then it says "You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?".I'm thinking it's more than likely an issue of having pulled out the usb cable without clicking 'safely remove'.

Yesterday I actually got it working again briefly by typing "chkdsk F: /R" into command prompt. Now when I do that it doesn't work, it says "The type of the file system is NTFS. Unable to determine volume version and state. CHKDSK aborted." And when I double click on F: drive in my computer it says "F:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted or unreadable".

Are there any other options besides using some sort of data recovery tool (I'd rather not do this just because it takes a long time)?

Answer:Solved: External hard-drive:...format the disk in drive F: before you can use it.

Working on a Compaq Presario CQ56. The Toshiba SATA 320GB Hard Drive was failing and was repaced with a new one identical to the pevious one. I ran the 4 Recovery Disks from the previous hard drive running Windows 7 Home. It was going well until I got a screen with X:\windows\system32\cmd.exe - startnet.cmd stating that there is not enough usable free space on specified disk(s) to extend the volume. (image attached)

I am not able to do anything. The drive is the exact same size as the previous one so I am not sure the issue. I also have a Boot CD, 2 Backup Disks, a Repair Disk, and a full back up saved on an external drive. Any suggestions on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.

Answer:[SOLVED] Help w/ hard drive replacement needed

It looks like there is used space on the C: drive You would need to do the diskpart /Clean command on the C: drive before you can restore to the C: drive

Hi all, I am new to this forum and would greatly appreciate any and all help. I have a Dell desktop Inspiron 530S that is 4 years old and had windows XP installed. Unfortunately, it appears that the hard drive has now died and I need to get a new 1. I have checked Dell, techforless, and newegg.com and have found the same model (#WD2500AAJS) but am not very knowledgeable about these things and cannot afford the Dell tech support.

I need to know the following:1. If I purchase the same model hard drive can I just plug it in and reinstall windows from the cd that came with the computer? 2. I have seen some hard drives advertised that indicate they do not come with free fall, is that something I need to worry about?3. I have read in different forums about people putting new hard drives into their computers and needing to do jumpers and updating bios and I don't know how to do any of these things nor can I get the computer to boot so I can try anything with it.

If anyone can help I would greatly appreciate it. I can't afford to purchase a new hard drive without being able to install it and get the computer working and no one I know is able or willing to help.

I've figured out how to upgrade RAM and finding one that is compatible with my laptop, but I am having a hard time understanding if an upgrade of an internal hard drive is possible and just where to get?

For example, I can't figure out if this is an internal hard drive or not?

On my XP Pro desktop I often USB plug-in an external drive. No problem with this but it places an icon on my bottom right task bar which I understand I have to click and then click the drive letter to get permssion to remove it, which sometimes takes two attempts.

Why can't I just remove the USB cable and ignore any permissions? After all one is supposed to be able to connect and disconnect USB hardware any time.

johnni

Answer:Solved: External Hard Drive

The icon is the safe removal icon and I doubt you can remove it or should try. You can set the drive to "optimize for quick removal" in Device Manager, Disks, Policies but you will still see the icon. The icon always appears in any version of Windows that us an external drive plugged into it.

So, the first problem I saw with this was from iTunes--but it turns out magically, overnight, without me making any changes, suddenly the only process in the universe's existence that knows my external drive is connected is explorer.exe. Meaning I can browse and launch programs from the drive just fine, but every single program and shortcut I own that uses that drive is acting like it's not connected.

I'm hoping there's a fix besides reconnecting the drive, because if my computer is on while the drive is disconnected, there's a 50/50 chance that my 100GB iTunes library of music and movies and stuff will completely lose all of its data and I'll have to spend over 24 hours rewriting all of the info!

Answer:Solved: My external hard drive is being a *******!!!

Bump.

HELP!!!

By the way, suddenly everything's working again except iTunes, including my short cuts and stuff.

I have an old Dell C600 laptop running XP pro which only has one USB port. I want to connect both a USB printer and an external hard drive at the same time.I have bought a four port usb hub but while the printer works fine, the Ext HDD shows up as either "Unknown Device" or with a disk size of 0.The Ext HDD works fine if I connect it directly to the USB port on the laptop.Is this because I bought a cheap USB hub or do not need to do something technical to get the HDD to work through the hub?

I purchased an external Seagate hard drive used, and when i received it i could not do a full format on it i even left it running overnight and it still didn't finish. does this mean that the drive is no good or failing?

Answer:Solved: External hard drive

How big is the drive?are you doing a full format or quick?It partitioned ok then?If you think the drive may be suspect run SeaTools on it

Ok so I had a problem with my Hard drive, which resolved itself in away, it wouldnt be recognised after formatting, so I'm thinking it doesn't have "Plug N play" though Im not quite familiar with what plug and play is, Could anyone help??

win xpunable to find external hard drive in my computer. It was working last time it was connected. when turning on drive bell sound from computer signifying drive connected but its not listed. any help appreciated. thanks

Found answer on site thanks.

Answer:Solved: external hard drive

Welcome to the TSG forums...

Any chance you'd post the link that helped you, so we could all see it?

OK, so you got this nailed down without any help from here... NOW, you can log in again, then use the "Thread Tools" option (near the top of the page) to mark this thread as "SOLVED"... logically, you MUST be logged in to access the Thread Tools...

I need to reinstall Windows XP and want to back up all of my files, photos and videos to an external hard drive. Is it difficult to do? Haven't gotten one yet. Will I be able to transfer all of my files to the EHD before I reinstall Windows XP?

I'm hoping that after reinstalling WXP, my software program will run and I'll no longer get the MS-DOS error message. Have tried everything.

Hi, I use an external HD called Freecom and haven't had any problems with it, apart from a while ago and recently, with Data loss. I understand this is due to SP2. I use Windows XP Pro and have used this external drive for a number of months now.

Just recently, I switched on Freecom and got the 'New Hardware found' message! I quickly checked my items on it (opening Explorer) and they seemed fine. I rebooted my PC and all was OK without any message. Yesterday and this morning, I switch Freecom on and I now get a message saying this USB is Hi-speed and can perform faster using the available free USB slots. It showed a list with these slots BUT I only have 1 physical free USB slot on my laptop. I have never ever seen this message before while using Freecom.

I have run Spybot Search & Destroy but nothing was found. I also ran a virus check and all was OK. I have noticed my system is slow but I only have 2 items on startup, namely Webshots, Diskeeper. When I used Diskeeper on the C and F drive, it was really slow.

I just bought an Iomega 500GB external hard drive which comes with a USB cable that has two connections for data and power, a Firewire 400 cable and a Firewire 800 cable for Mac. I managed to finally get it formatted in Windows using the USB cable, but when I hook it up via firewire 400 it is not recognized. My Firewire ports work...do I need external power or something?

I need to buy an external hard drive and was looking at Seagate ST305004FDA1E1-RK FreeAgent Desktop 500 GB USB External Hard Drive. I have read some reviews that make me wonder if I should reconsider and buy something else.

Can any one recommend a good reliable (reasonably priced) one? Nothing too difficult to install and run.In addition to XP, I must be able to install it on computer running WINME (my main reason for getting one).

I want to buy an external hard drive for backups of my 2 computers. I have seen 2 different ones advertised at Office Max and I don't know what to look for in making this purchase.One is a Seagate Free Agent 500GB portable the other a Seagate Free Agent Desk 1TB hard drive. Both run at $100.00. Which of these would be the best buy for me or should I look for something else?

Hello, I am trying to connect my WD external hard drive to my new Inspiron 1420 that has Vista but I cant figure out how to open it. I went to my computer and WD as I did on windows xp but none of the files I click on will actually open to the WD program so i can manage my files and upload them onto the new computer. Really a Vista novice here...Thanks!

My laptop recognizes my Ex HDD and functions as it should butwhen I search for a folder or file using Start/ Search programmes and filesthe X Drive isn't searched (not recognized ?) and I get "no items match your search".Is this normal or can it be corrected?

Earlier this year I got a new computer. I am a bit vaque about the mechanics of what I did. Anyway, I had to buy an external hard drive to which I moved (copied?) the info, documents etc. from the old computer where they stayed, not being transferred to the new computer. This external hard drive has now been stolen (nothing else).By chance, I still have the hard drive from the old computer, but not the computer itself. My question is this - would the above info still be on the old hard drive and if it is would it be retrievable and able to be put onto a new external hard drive? Many thanks in advance.

If I get an external hard drive deos that mean, that I could install all of my software eg. microsoft office, photo shop and also a few games on it. So when I need to reformat my computer I don't need to re-install all of my stuff again? If this is true what external hard drives would you recomend.. thanks.

Answer:Solved: Getting an External Hard drive

You can install many programs to externals. But all your programs would need to be reinstalled, anyway, if you reformatted since only part of installed programs go to the Program Files folder. Other files go to places throughout the file system, and you would need to reinstall everything, anyway, just to create the needed registry entries.

This is the first time I did this, I just did a disc image recently on a new external hard drive but can't figure out how to get the disc image back onto my PC when I might need it. I know it must be a very simple process to do but darn if I can figure out how it's done... Don't need to do it right now but would like to know now so if I do need to do it I can. I am using Windows 7. Thanks.

Answer:[SOLVED] External Hard Drive

How did you create your disc image? Usually you reverse process. You would start the program that you used to create the image and choose Restore, and lead it to your image file.If you wanted to restore the whole OS from an image file, then if image program allowed you to create a boot disc, you would boot off of the boot disc and choose Restore.

I have had an external hard drive connected to my computer for years, when initially installed, I cordoned it into two sections so my wife and I could each use half for photos, graphics, etc. so there should be a "J" drive and an "L" drive listed on "My Computer". Today, I noticed that it wasn't responding. I checked the drive and realized one of the two cables had been disconnected. I reconnected the cables and restarted my computer but I still don't see the hard drives when I open up "My Computer". Any ideas on how to get them back?

I'm running XP Home Version on an eMachine with a Pentium 4 processor.

Thank you!

Answer:Solved: External Hard Drive

How was the external drive connected? Which cable was loose? If you go to the control panel, administrative tools, computer management, disk management, do you see the drive listed? Can you see the drive in your BIOS?

You might try shutting the computer down, disconnecting the drive, booting into windows, shutting the computer down again, reconnecting the drive, and then seeing if windows detects it?

I have several questions about using an external hard drive for the first time:1. Any suggestions about transfering data from the internal drive to the external one?2. How easy is it to transfer data back to the internal hard drive from the external one?3. Is it a good idea to simply transfer all of my C: ( Win XP) to the external drive? Wouldit be useful? 4. Is it a good thing to transfer data / C: from my laptop ( Vista) to the same external drive, if I have space?Thanking you in advance.

Hey guys, i have just registered here to see if anyone can help me, as ive been looking online for help but cant find any.

Basically, i just upgraded my ps3 hdd so i purchased an enclosure for the 2.5" sata drive that i took out of the ps3. I plugged it inot my Vista laptop and it didnt show, so i went into disk management and initialized it then formatted it. I wanted to use the hdd to transfer films onto my ps3, but i needed to format it in FAT32, so as windows doesnt format in that type i found a program which did and it formatted it fine. (cant remember the name of the program). Anyway like i say, it was all fine and i was able to put my films onto the hd. Unfortunately the ps3 didnt recognise the hdd when i connected it, and i realised i needed to create a folder on the hd then put the movies in the folder, so i connected it back to my laptop and now it doesnt recognise it. It makes the sound that it has been connected but the drive doesnt show in "my computer" and when i go into disk management it says that the type is "unknown" and the status is "unreadable".

Once the films were put onto the hard drive i did disconnect it without clicking on the icon to safely remove the hardware. I think that this may be the problem. Sorry for the long explanation, but thought it would be better to explain it all.

So i just wondered if there was anyway to fix this problem. im not fussed if i lose the films on the hard drive coz i have them saved... Read more

Hi,I have a new computer. My old computer had a 500gb drive. I purchased an External Hard Drive enclosure and want to install my old computer's HD in it. But I'm not sure of a few things...

Both old and new computers are running Windows 7 64bit

If I use the old HD as external with new computer, can I just leave the OS on it?Can I access programs on the old hard drive? (Or will they be slow)Obviously, the old hard drive was a master. Will this work as an External or does an external need to be set to slave?

My gut feeling is that all I need to do is attach it and I can access it. But I would appreciate any input.

Thanks

Answer:Solved: External Hard Drive

champ123 said:↑

If I use the old HD as external with new computer, can I just leave the OS on it?Can I access programs on the old hard drive? (Or will they be slow)Obviously, the old hard drive was a master. Will this work as an External or does an external need to be set to slave?

Click to expand...

If you want to leave the OS on there you can but it'll be a wast of space as Win 7 will be non-bootable.

No you can not run applications from the old OS, you will have to re-install them on the new system. If some applications have backup and restore capability you should do so with them.

You should move all important data such as Documents, pictures, videos, e-mail backup and browser favorites and the such to the new system. Format the external drive them move the data back as a data storage drive. IMO.

Hey guys,So for some reason, When I right click on my external hard drive in disk management to choose to shrink it, I don't have that option. I mean i've looked all over youtube and found guides how to partionize a external hard drive but for my hard drive, I don't get the option to shrink the volume. Why is this? Any help I can fix this? thanks

Answer:Solved: external hard drive help :/

Hello,Is the selection to shrink the drive grayed out or it isn't displayed at all?

Hi, I have an Acer Netbook with no disk drive. I've been advised to get an external back up drive thingie (new to home pc's so forgive me!) to back up files etc. I'm from the UK and wonder if anyone has any advice on buying one. I think you can get one for around £40+. I don't need large space as I can't download anything onto disks.

Thanks in advance for any advice

Answer:Solved: External hard drive

Something like this would do....and always get bigger than you need as space disappears ...this is a 320 Gb but you can get bigger

Hello! Thanks for reading this! I just recently purchased a 100 Gb laptop hard drive together with an outer case and a USB cable. I just wanted to upgrade my laptop's hard disk, by first making an image of my current drive into my new one through the outer casing. The thing is when I connect it to my laptop, windows cannot detect it. Whats wrong with it? Is there anything I have to do?thanks in advance!

I realize there are a few different forums this question can go in, so if this is the wrong one I apologize.

Anyway, I've had an external hard drive as long as I've had my laptop (3+ years) and it's always shown up as Local Disk (F:). Recently, I got a Blackberry and when I connected it to the computer, it showed up as Blackberry (F:) and my hard drive has been changed to Local Disk (G:). At first I didn't care, but then I realized that this messes with a lot of path names. For example, none of my music will play in Winamp now. Is there a way to switch my external hard drive back to (F:)?

Answer:[SOLVED] External hard drive help

Go to Start/Run and type diskmgmt.msc and hit enter. In the Disk Management window Right click your Blackberry and choose Change Drive Letter and Path. Choose a drive letter that is not being used like S: or whatever. Now do the same for your External Hard Drive but make it drive F:

Would an external hard drive help speed up your computer? Or is it used mostly for back ups? My hard drive is getting pretty full. I must be to lazy to reformat,or don't have the skills to format the hard drive. So what would be the best route to take? Thank You

Answer:Solved: External Hard Drive

Having an external drive won't, of itself, speed up your computer but having an over full drive can cause the machine to slow down. If you're looking to clean up some of the junk on your drive start with this TSG library article.http://library.techguy.org/wiki/How_to:_Free_up_drive_space.

Obviously moving files to the external drive will help to free up space.

So, the screen on my friend's laptop is dying and I took his hard drive out and put it in a USB 2.0 external enclosure. The hard drive has Windows XP installed on it.

When I connected the hard drive to another laptop he has that is running Windows Vista (Home Premium I think), Vista mounted the drive as read-only and I'm told I'm denied access to most of the files on the drive. By using the UAC, I can gain access to the files but I don't understand why I'm getting the security problems, in the first place.

I then connected the hard drive to another system, a desktop system running Windows XP Home Edition, and when I tried to access the files, I get "Access Denied" messages. So, there must be something on the hard drive in the USB enclosure that is causing the security problems.

When I connect the drive to my Linux system, I can access the files without any problems.

Any ideas on what the problem might be? I'm posting this issue here since the ultimate goal is to get read/write access to the hard drive in the USB enclosure on the laptop running Vista.

Hi guys, I have a SmartDisk FireLite External Hard Drive (Model No. FWFL80) that I found on an airplane a long time ago and couldn't use for the longest time, but recently got a new computer that has a 6 pin firewire card. I am using Windows XP OS and the smartdisk website said it should be plug and play with no need to install drivers.

My computer recognizes the Hardware Device is plugged in but I cannot find a Drive or any other way to access it. I would Like to try to format it but smartdisk only offers Format software for mac OS, just wondering if anyone had any ideas on some things I could try to get this working?

I followed the apple support instructions to copy my itunes library to an external hard drive. Then I deleted the library off of my desktop hard drive. But now my library doesn't show up in itunes. I went to edit-preferences-advanced and the external drive shows up as the location of the library but the songs, etc. don't show up on itunes. The songs are on the drive, I checked. Please help!

I bought an external hard drive enclosure and took out my slave drive that was in the computer installed it into the enclosure. Thought all would go good , but when I plugged in the power cord and usb cable Windows XP did not recognize it. The instuction booklet that came with the enclosure does not help at all neither does the cd. I am running Windows XP home edition on a HP pavilion xt 963 ,Intel Celeron CPU 1200mhz, 256 mb ram ,not sure if usb ports are 1.0 or 2.0 but according to the box the enclosure is a 2.0 but backward compliant. I have also unsuccessfully tried to install it on a computer running windows 98, 184 mb ram , AMD 3d processor. It comes up on both as being an unknown device. Any help is greatly appreciated.Thanks CASSIE69EMT

I have a USB 2.0 Notebook enclosure that I have been using. It worked great with this old 10 gig hard drive I was using. I purchased a new 40 Gig drive and I cannot get it to be recognized in "My Computer" It shows up in device manager as soon as it's plugged in. I also get the balloon pop up saying it's installed and ready to use. Is there something I have to do to make it recognizable.

Right Click on My Computer and Select Manage. Then select Disk Management and you shoudl see the new drive. Right click on the name of the drive and Initialize it. Then right click anywhere on the drive space and choose to Partition it. You'll also be given the option to format it and assign a drive letter.

I have a maxtor external hard drive. It was working properly but apparently I put a file on it that corrupted the drive. Drive will no longer work with Windows XP. When I connect the drive it shows up in my computer but if I click on it then my computer freezes. I have a Linux Ubuntu disk and if I run Linux from the disk it will recognize the drive. I can access the files and move them so I have recovered the files I wanted, but now I need to reformat the drive do that I can use it with windows again. The permissions are not allowing me to delete all the files. It just freezes when I try to delete them or it says permission will not allow. The files I was able to delete are in the trash bin and I cannot remove them so they are still on the drive. Is there a way I can use Linux or windows to reformat the external hard drive?

I just recently bought a 2TB LaCie External Hard Drive. My Mum wanted to buy me a LaCie Network Space 2 one, but I thought that because it had too many functions in it, it may possibly break down quick. >.<

I used to have a 1TB one, but it randomly broke down too. I had it for about 3-4 years and it used to work just fine until one day - when it decided to not turn back on. It kept making a spinning noise, as if it's attempting to turn on but would turn back off and try again. Changing the power supply didn't help. I hope that the files are safe though. Gonna try giving it to a professional, hope that he'd be able to retrieve the files... Anybody else ever had this problem?

My question for now is; Is it bad to turn my LaCie on & off often? I only turn my external hard drive on when I need it, then turn it back off so that it doesn't get too hot. But is that a bad idea? If so, how often should I turn it off?

Thanking you.

Answer:Solved: Is it bad to turn on & off an External Hard Drive often?

Hi to all,I tend to work from Maxtor, my external drive, so that my work is automatically backed up (although I also back up to disc every so often as a precaution). I use Windows XP Pro and MS Office Suite 2K Professional and have suddenly developed the following problem. I was creating a folder for one of my DVDs, which included photos and text. One of the photos hadn't been printed, although it was sitting there on my document. I decided to delete the photo and reinsert it but then Word 'encountered a problem and had to close'. This happened each time I opened this particular document. I then copied this file to the C-Drive and I was able to manipulate the photo and print it off without a problem. I then copied this file back to Maxtor and it was OK and didn't close Word this time. I had this incident last year and removed and reinstalled the Office Suite but I can't remember if this resolved the issue or not because I then had to format my hard drive (thinking that this would cure all). Thing is, I now have the same problem again. It only seems to be when I work from my external drive. Please has anyone any ideas? The file contained 528KB. Many thanks, Morny

I am having problems getting a WD MyBook 320 Gb Essential Edition external hard drive to be recoginized on an XP Pro SP3 machine. The drive is recoginized on a Vista machine. WD tech support recommended I format it but that made no difference. It locks everything up until I unplug it from the usb port.

I hooked up my external hard drive to make a back-up today and noticed a folder on it that couldn't be deleted. "4044f7e9dc7e0cad0b" and in this folder was an executable file called mrtstub.exe I did some searching and found out that it could be a Microsoft file or malware. I thought i should post here first because it could be nothing. What concerns me is that it does not have a digital signature tab and I do not have permission to delete it, also the fact that it's on my external drive. What would it be doing there and why?

Run XP On a DELL 8100 with a firewire connection to a acomdata external hard drive 160GB. I have done the right click on my computer, manage, storage diskmanagement etca nd it still does not show up. The only one that show up in that list is the internal and CDROM.

I have reinstalled my OS several times in the past year due to some problems with my DSL and my external drive has always been been given "F". Now my floppy is "A", hard drive "C", DVD player "D" and DVD recorder "E" and now the external is "G". I know this is correct but why was it "F" before?. Will this cause any problems with the files in it?

Answer:Solved: External Hard drive changed

It won't cause problems with the files, however it will cause problems with links as they will all be broken. If you have no links to the harddrive then don't worry about it. For example if you have a program that you installed onto the hard-drive instead of the C:\Program Files directory, or you have a JPEG or document on the hard-drive that you open clicking on it's shortcut somewhere else. Links will have to be changed, but that's no biggie

I bought a cavalry caui37400 external hard drive a few months ago. Worked great did everything I expected. I just reformatted my computer and now it either doesn't want to recognize it or it recognizes it incorrectly as a removable media (instead of a hd). How do I fix that problem? Help appreciated, thanks.

I am trying to get my WD Dual-Option Combo External Drive to work with a Nippon Labs 10 ft. USB 3.0 A Male to A Male Cable Model USB3-10MM. When i plug it in to my computer (Windows XP Pro) it does not show up anywhere. i attempted to install the drivers from the WD website, but that did nothing. I also looked for something in the device hardware, but its like there is nothing even plugged in. This External Hard drive used to work fine with my old Windows Server 2003, but i had a different cable then. Am i missing some crucial step?

Answer:Solved: External Hard drive and USB to USB cable

Does your external drive have an internal USB hub with USB A female jacks front and back? Those will not work for connecting a host computer. A USB cable from the computer needs to attach to the USB B female jack.

i put a internal hard drive. in a external case. both new! i hooked it up an it works good. the only bad thing is when i turn on the external HD. i get this pop up. all the time. i turned off auto play an it still does it. does any body know a way to stop that every time i start it?

Hey guys! I was just curious as to how to replace my external hard drive. Basically I have a 500 gb hd and I want to replace it with a 1 TB and sell the 500 gb, but I have a lot of things installed on the 500 gb (not using it as my main hard drive of course). Anyways, my question is: is it possible to transfer all my stuff into the 1 tb and then just change the partitions so that it directs to the one tb? if that is possible can anyone instruct me on how to do so? thank you!

I have an external hard drive connected to my computer which stopped working last night all of a sudden. I just started hearing this ticking sound like a clock and realized it was my external hard drive so I shut down my computer and everything and waited til this morning to deal with it. So I started up my computer and ext hd and then it started the ticking sound again and I cannot see it when I go to My Computer. I unplugged the ext hd and plugged it back in to see if I could see it but I cannot. Is there any way possible to get all the files off of it?? Here's the model I have:

Maxtor Personal Storage 3100Capacity: 200 GB

The only other numbers on there are a S/N# and EDA#. So let me know if I need to put those here as well.

The problem I have is that my external hdd isn't visible in My Computer. It excist in the device-manager, and I can reach it through cmd. I also can get into it with shortcuts and it's visible in some programs. But IF i go into it with a shortcut I can't create a folder/file with long filenames or certain characters in it, BUT it works fine to do that if I browse it in cmd.

So, apparently it's some bug in windows xp, I've searched everywere for a solution, I've seen many with the same problems, but haven't seen one answer. Formatting is not an option. I've tried to reinstall windows, but it didn't help.

I think the problem started when I installed my iPod, but I've uninstalled it and reinstalled all USB-drivers etc, without progress.

Everytime I start the computer I need to assign a letter to the disk through the disk-manager, and it's gone when I reboot. In the disc-manager it says it's active and working.

I was thinking that it might be some old junk in the registry, or similar. The disc works at other computers with windows xp.

Thanks in advance//Martin

Answer:Solved: External Hard-drive not visible

Try this to reset all the USB driver configurations.

Create a file with NOTEPAD containing the following lines and save it as FIX.REG-------------------------- cut after this line --------------------------------REGEDIT4

"DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES"="1"-------------------------- cut before this line --------------------------------

Double click on FIX.REG and say yes to the Merge Into Registry question.

Unplug ALL USB devices.Open Device Manager.View, Show Hidden Devices.Uninstall all devices under USB Controllers.Uninstall all devices under Disk Drives that you know are not present.Uninstall all devices under Storage Volumes. Say no to any reboot prompts until you are finished. Also, if a Storage Volume doesn't uninstall, ignore it and move to the next one.If you have a yellow ? with unknown devices, uninstall all of the entries there as well.

hello everyone it seems i have yet another hardware problem *sigh*. i bought an external Hard drive (This One) and its been working fine for about 6-8-9 months i really dont remeber. all of a sudden the other day it just stopped working. i plug it in and the little blue light turns on like always for all about 5 seconds then shuts off. i can still hear the hard drive spinning. when i connect it to windows nothing shows up on my computer, the blue light is off (even though its usually on) but the hard drive is still spinning. also if i plug it in my windows kinda freezes, it wont open anything till i disconnect it. also i put my ear to it and it sounds horrible, i hope to god im wrong but it sounds like its scraping on something and it doesn't sound the same. so any ideas anyone?

EDIT: also it makes a clicking noise. btw if my HDD is broken can i recover my data? i dont even want all of of it, but only about 5 GB and its all in one folder too if that helps

I need your expertise for this one. I have an Samsung 60GB hard drive that I have been using for backup. The drive is in an external case connected thru a usb port & I have been using it for some time without problems. Since it was previously formated as FAT32, I decided to clean it up & reformat as NTFS.

After cleaning I ran Partition Magic 8, to set up 2 partitions & received an "error 27, Cannot lock drive".

Tried to reformat with Windows. After the format appeared to be finishing I received "Windows unable to complete format" .

The drive displays in MY Computer but shows no Total space or free space. If I click properties: it shows 0 used space 0 free space. Also none of the Tools in the run on it.

Running Win XP HomeWhat can I do to fix it????

Answer:Solved: Can Not Format External Hard drive

You may have to remove the drive from the external case and connect it temporarily on your secondary IDE channel. If you can't format it there, try the disk manufacturer's diagnostics and see if the drive has died for some reason. You might also try DBAN to totally clear the entire drive and see if that allows you to complete the partitioning and formatting.

I have a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 SATA hard drive (9HH132-500) that I am trying to utilize as an external USB drive. I purchased the IDE SATA to USB cable, with 120 VAC power connector cord. The current machine is Windows XP.

The drive shows up in the Device Manager (see attached), but will not display as an accessible drive (for the purpose of loading files and such). I can feel the drive turning.

I'm assuming I am missing a particular step or activity so the drive can become accessible.

Currently, there are no jumpers on the back of the drive, which I believe is the proper configuration for it to be a slave drive.

Hello, I changed windows from xp to win7 and now when I try to enter to my external hard drive (which was working perfectly on win xp) I get an error "F:\ is not accessible. Access is denied." Win7 doesn't have access to that hard drive, it even can't run error-check. Any advice?

My medion 250 gb hard drive has not been working since I shut down and restarted. I am getting a message that one of my usb ports is no good. I have been to manage in computer and then disk management but the drive is not showing there either. I tried it on my computer running xp it did'ent work there either now when I am back on my vista computer I have noticed that the blue light on the drive is off. Is the drive kaput???

My 500G external drive is slowly filling up and it's time to move up to a BIG drive....there are lots of them out there; can someone reccomend a reliable one to get? This is strictly for backing up data, photos, images, videos, etc.

I'd like to get away for less than $150 if possible but don't want to compromise if there is a huge difference by spending a few more bucks. Thanks!

Answer:Solved: Need recc. for a 2T external hard drive

There are no huge differences. They are all good or most would not be there to buy. I personally prefer WD and Hitachi over Seagate since I have had far more Seagate failures than any other brand.

www.tigerdirect.com

But remember when you say "backup" that there still needs to be an original copy of each file or it is not a "backup" at all. Externals fail far more often than internals and your data is not safe.

My external Hard drive which holds a lot of my files suddenly has frozen up. Does not show up as active drive "G" on my system. Seems to be frozen in the on position but cannot hear it running. It is a Western Digital 250G. Has anybody had any dealing with any company that try to get the data off of drives like this. This is not my entire backup but I would loose a lot of files especially pictures and video if I cannot recover. I have disconnected it as it will not turn off. (The light is on all the time). I always kept it running as I figured it was possiblyl just as hard on it starting and stopping as continual running and the enternal drive of my Dell has been running for 4 1/2 years.

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this question but I tried putting it under hardware and received no responses...so here goes.

I have an external hard drive, and I use Karen's Replicator to back up my files and folders. About ten days ago it stopped backing up. The icon was still shown on my system tray but,when I clicked on it ,the window shown was different from in the past. It was more of a welcome window and didn't include any information under several tabs such as Last Run, where I could check for failures.

So I uninstalled it and then installed it again, only to get the same very limited window. I don't know if Karen's has changed its format or if there is some other problem.

Hey everyone. I need everybody's help put together.My external Hard Drive Crashed on Friday. It started this way.It actually fell from my table and refused to come on ever since.It was just making clicking sounds and beeping repeatedly without spinning.Agitated, I opened up the device, and discovered that the lens wasn't moving over the discs neither were the discs themselves rolling.So I got a working hard drive, opened it up and decided to swap the discs, but its still not working.The Hard Disc is 500GB and I have over 430GB materials on it and on nowhere else.Somebody, People, Please HELP